Callipygian

A perfect circle.
Of two palms up
Sweet curvature.
Vavoom
Goes the Dump Truck
With Mud flaps
And Junk in the Trunk.
A tear sheds
For the Beauty
Of that booty.
Bla-Dow
The hourglass
Passes
Timeless
I'll have seconds.
Let me see that
Tootsie Roll
Dip
Zoom Zoom
Boom Boom
I cannot lie
Sprung

callipygian: Having beautifully proportioned buttocks.

Po box 8077
London KY 40742

To Whom it May Concern,

Or Should I say Faceless Corporation. This is not an angry letter. This is the happy letter of a disappointed man. My name is William Joseph Brame and I am a new Sprint PCS costumer. My Sprint PCS number is _________. Up until about an hour ago I was completely satisfied with my new phone, and all the services offered especially the PCS vision. On top of my satisfaction with my camera and web ready phone, you could add my relief that I would never have to deal with my old phone company ever again. I was overjoyed because I thought Sprint was different. I thought for sure that Sprint could not have the mediocre customer service and billing errors that I had become accustomed too. I use the past tense because on the evening of Tuesday Dec 16 my Sprint PCS service was interrupted, less than a week after signing a two year contract. Woe is me. I received this information via text message on my beautiful phone that had up until that moment only brought me joy, a polite message saying that I was over my credit limit and my pleasure giving phone would be temporarily turned off. Well you can just imagine what the look on my face was. . That’s right sad face. Here we go again, another phone company, another run around. So I proceed to dial the old *2 and wait. And wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. The dot dot dot’s are for dramatic effect. So as I am wasting away my evening using my fun phone for oh so unfunny activities I play a little Pac-Man. That’s not so bad now is it. I was also learning a little about the cult I had just joined. “Did you know that Sprint has the nation’s only all digital wireless network. . . “and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Well than after 15 minutes or so I finally speak to a person her name is Jen, or for your records Jen V06JSS2964. A wonderful costumer service rep and she should get a raise but that is beside the point and will never happen because you are a faceless corporation who doesn’t care about little people like me and Jen. So you guys win on the customer service but the billing is another story. Apparently the phone was not set up correctly. Ha ha ha. I can laugh now because I have been refunded and because it really is laughable. But apparently I had been paying for every call that I made. I had accrued some 180 dollars in usage charges within 5 days of having my phone. Ha ha ha. Again you must remember that this was a sad a pitiful laugh and not just a jolly good time laugh. But it is all fixed now. All that is lost is my 45 minutes that I could have spent doing countless other things. Other things like reading a book or talking to my fiancé, or as my roommate requested, doing the dishes. But than again that is life. So in closing my purpose in this letter is both to entertain, if someone actually ever reads it, and to help you understand that it sucks to deal with bureaucracy. It just plain does. I don’t really want anything free although if it makes you guys feel better it might go a long way to restoring my hope for humanity, I just wanted to speak my mind. In truth I like my plan. I like that I can send pictures of my butt to my roommate. I just hate that corporations, specifically in this case Sprint PCS, run a completely inefficient world where my valuable time is wasted listening to computerized propaganda and mildly amusing hold music. Do with this what you may. These are just the ramblings of one happy yet disappointed man.

Sincere as you can possibly be when writing to no one,
William Joesph Brame

I can feel it in the air. My smile touches my ear lobes and my knees won't stop bouncing. She's coming. The giddy silly energy of expectation becomes elation momentarily. The seconds tick by. The kiss grows nearer. My dream will soon touch my skin again. But I'll be awake this time. Awake and completely caught in the present moment. Only moments away.

The tired man can look in the mirror with his bloodshot eyes just as the drunk can drink trough a straw as much as a bottle. The baby is growing inside the unwed mother earth and the family planning is about to be the hero. Window jumping is a sport the soul can play with its out of body experiences when the moon gets boring. The height is running away from the falling projection of the self I created today for the onlookers below who will pretend nothing happened. Conflict is the taxi of time. Torture is the medal of honor. But honor hasn't existed since the Nixon administration.

In the middle of my country, resting in between excursions, I ponder the probably and wonder what the maybes hold. I know that the future watching is a horrible game for the human mind. I swallow hard every time I make plans. I can't have the assurance, or insurance, or sure of anything-ness anymore. Not that I ever had it, maybe that I thought I did. Each sharp turn each dollar of someone else's money spent a claim on tomorrow that might not be coming the way I like it. It might be waiting to come, it might be coming tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Hope or Die I hear the bartender say. Die of hope says the salesman. I can't put my finger on the lie but than again I haven't had feeling in my hand for a month. The truth can hurt you when you want the lie. Lonely, in a crowd of friends, I cry the hidden tears of an icon.

"Ambition is not inherently wrong. It only becomes wrong when it is focused completely on the self to the exclusion of others."
Tim Keel
Jacobs Well 11-09-03

I stuck my arm up to reach for the stars and got ran over from behind by a garbage truck. I just want that taste in my mouth again. To pretend for hours on end and become what you aren't. To drive to be the one that makes the belly ache. The one that brings the house down to the place it wants to be. Whoever gets there first can help me to become better than they are but I will in the meanwhile slap at their ankles just to watch myself win. What if things changed.

Piles of nonsense sink the boat of my make-shift life. She is withered. She is broken down. If only the day of the champange bottle would return. When I broke that bubbly over her bough and the wind whipped her sails for the first white time. This make-shift break neck speed of life would return to the moment just before she sailed. The waves could be forgotten. The punishing storm would be lost in that stillness.

Run to the victory lane with your head between your knees each night before sleep hits you in the face with a sledge. I poke the pole and sit to listen to the ting. I wonder what things used to be like before I decided to forget it all. Would you please pinch me. Wipe that grin from your check with a used napkin. I like the ideas you think when you're alone. I list the properties of matter next to my groceries and wind string around my finger to remind me to hate. To hate the distance. To trash a gated community with a blade of grass.

Who's that sitting there looking all unimportant. I hate to distract one away from the things they have to do . . . but excuse me . . . excuse me please . . . just for a second while I shoot this flare in the trash can. Take the planet for instance. Well done my good and faithful mistake. Oh wait did that come out wrong excuse me. I divide the flesh and spirit because Descartes defines his universe by thinking. I know that there has to be more. Replace my innocence with a factory of images that are destroying my heart systematically. Rebirth. Go back to what you used. Go back to what used to. In the past tense tension reigned and I closed my eyes hoping that it would all relieve itself. Won't you just leave me alone. Alone without a clock. Alone without a future. I'm sorry for interrupting this disappointment. Paraphrase the captions and stutter like a deaf man afraid of public speaking. The means of communication are limited because I don't even know what I'm saying. The means. The means. Always the means. Minutes ago we were only concerned with outcomes. Without coming to anywhere. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel to believe in the nothing that is around me. All around. Excuse me did you get that. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Secrets amongst friends make the burdens fresh like saltwater taffy in the morning. Hop into a magic carpet and pretend the rug is more than enough. Sweep the street with a car chase and burn rubber for dollars on street corners where children beat buckets. To challenge the playing field I bought a sofa and sheeted it on the floor. Emblem after swipe and emblem I dropped the contents of the future mortgage for ducketts. I need to bang a bucket.

I don't know what the feeling feels like anymore. Is it the kind of thing you can sink you teeth into? I've lost mine long ago. I don't know if there is a system or a path to take beside the I fall down everyday. Take the mountain and put it on its head and spin it like a top. Take the whole world in his hand and think about how small you are.

Release the hounds on the dung pile of reviling stench. Pinch my brain wave and push save on the grave of a mattadoor. A land sore always dodging the bulls and dodging the rules and dodging like fools from rotten tomatoes. Radios and Shock Jocks talk big talks on things dark and the moon catches midnight by surprise. I advise that the lives of the scribes be taken seriously. Reversely laugh at the illiterate illegitimate children of time. Crime after crime committed out of wedlock leads to deadlock. Expect the infamous to distance their legacy form their relentless purist of nothingness.

And so the time passes like a slug through molasses and the day keeps on and on the way you always wish it wouldn't. Pounding my feet in the stampede even though the cliff is looming. Can it really be that far away. It feels like forever since the shot went off but feeling forever is hard for mere mortals. The future is unnamed and untamed. Can I lasso the moon from a starship made of cardboard? So weak after week I cry myself to sleep.

Heart Hole

When I wake up crying
For the way things
should be
I feel it

When I spend my time
staring at pixels
of a far away life
I feel it

When my hand swings
lonely by my side
as a walk
I feel it

When time freezes in place
A place where no one
should be
I feel it

When I lose track
of everything but the
number of days
I feel it

I feel it so deep
I feel it at the center of my everything
I feel it in the silence
In the static
In the echo
I feel it

She's missing
And she's taken me with her

The facial hair makes the man

In the barber's chair sat a man of portly proportion with a head that made his shoulders look too small and eyes that made his face look like it had spent too much time in the vice grips of his grandpa's work shop. He could have been a grandpa himself with his receding hair line and expanding wrinkly forehead. His smooshed up eyes gave him the look of a fertile man, perhaps with fertile offspring. The broad expanse of his cheeks and chin flowed seamlessly into his tree stump neck. It was not so much a jaw but a throat bone, that gyrated with each hardy laugh from the hole in his lower face and upper neck. He had a mustache, a beautiful thick caterpillar mustache that was sucking the rest of his face into its vortex. The lips were long gone and the nose was close behind in the endless consumption. The extremely close eyes were falling into its grasp with every blink. What before appeared as laughter was now obviously the throat bone grasping for air and struggling to break free from the black hole of that fabulous mustache.

my hair is still not dry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers previously picked by Pepe. Pepe put the precious pickled peppers precisely in his pouch. Peter pulled a pistol from his pants pocket and put it to Pepe's pupil. Poor Pepe peed his purple pants and palpitated profusely. Peter popped Pepe's peppers into his pepper picking purse and proceeded to prance off into the prairie. Peter penned a pine on picking peppers, but people have postulated as to the present placement of the precarious peppers. Perhaps people perceive the pompous personality of Peter behind his precocious pepper pocket picking plot, but the patriarchal pedagogy places people of Pepe's pigment on the poop pile.

Say that five times fast.

No work for the willing but the free lunch keeps coming. Thoughts of moth eaten futures lead me to wonder why my head is in the sand. Who will be the one to denoucne the system of endenchered serveants working for relentless and faceless masters? Keep the tide coming Mr. Moon without it we will all starve. Empty bread baskets tie the man to the land with nothing to show for it. When will the sand let my poor head go. Pinching the pocket lady to provide for the president. The people laugh and cry and fall asleep again hopefully for the last time.

Someone else's pipe

my front teeth don't fit
in the groove
and the bowl is burnt
the carved wood
feels wrong in my hand
and the mouthpiece is loose
the deep thoughts
definitely aren't mine
and the plastic tip is chipped
it doesn’t stay lit
for more than a minute
and it gives more worries than it takes
it's hard to clean
and harder to keep
the smell infects everything it touches
the graven leaves
on the bowl
wouldn't be my first choice
its a little bit short
and a little less curvy
a little more Popeye than Professor
but I like it
for 1.99
I love it

Habitual Hater

I hate golf. I hate cabbage patches. I hate hair. I hate goblins. I hate hamburgers. I hate yoo-hoo. I hate people named Norman. I hate rabbits. I hate mashed potatoes with lumps. I hate wolf-man. I hate volume. I hate cobblestone. I hate stories. I hate buildings. I hate trees. I hate hands. I hate rap music. I hate California. I hate flogging. I hate jump ropes. I hate cats. I hate gin. I hate wires. I hate sentences. I hate mutton. I hate happy teachers. I hate shirts with collars. I hate rest. I hate falling. I hate answers. I hate tabletops. I hate fingernail collections. I hate disenchantment. I hate sideways. I hate midnight. I hate Robin Hood. I hate pickle relish.

The words I prayed

If only I could be that man.
The one who knows what to say
When she cries.
I fear that each silent second
Ticks away
And I have nothing
To give.

Humility sinks in
When proud orations
Seem trite and meaningless.
Like the Hypocrites
I long to only
have to be seen
Not taken seriously.

A tear hits my chest
As expectant ears
hope that words will come.
Words that have
Depth . . .
Feeling . . .
Love . . .
Yet nothing.

What if it never came.
What if the time ticked
And the tears dried
And our hearts stopped
And not a word
not a single word
not a single simple word

The Spirit overwhelms
My silence turns
Into grumblings
Of peaceful apologies
Repentant promises
Careful visions
Helpless Adoration

Romans 8:26

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

"I'm not a Slave
To a God that doesn't exist
I'm not a Slave
To a World that doesn’t give a s**t"

Marilyn Manson "Fight Song"

I just stayed up way to late to watch a movie that got me too hype on too many stupid ideas that get me so hype that I have to stay up and write about them than go to sleep. So about 6 months ago everybody and their mom watched this movie called "Bowling for Columbine" and told me I should do the same. The premise of the documentary film is that America has the most gun violence in the world. They try to figure out why and never really give any definitive answers. There is so much underlying activism in the movie that it can't possibly come into your head and not make an impact. I know that guns are bad, but now I know I shouldn't shot people. I don't know what I know I just know that Marilyn Manson is right. I am not a slave, being oppressed against my will by a fictitious Deity. I am a bondservant to a God-Man who has given s**t upon s**t for me. The cross the biggest s**ter of them all. I'm not a slave to a world either. I am a joint-heir in the kingdom with my Master who has called me son. Okay so that being said the movie rocked and that song got me hype. See it. Decide for yourself whether or not handguns are stupid.

Occasionally I stray away from coherent thoughts on this page. Today will be different. Today will be like Ice Cream cones made of Ice Cream. Today will be like Nazi calculus all the calculations with none of the hairdos. Today will be like a pantomime of the Mexican American war. Today will be like popcorn-balls-in-a-gym-sock slingshots. Today will be like a clothes hamper with the fashion savvy of a non-gay Whoopi Goldberg. Today will be like a riddle with no middle. Today will be like ham hocks that call each other by their surnames. Today will be about the same as a chicken wire piggy bank that can swim. Today will remind some of the forgotten holiday of Tognoblit where the traditional wafer was partaken of before its being forgotten except for those who still remember but don't do anything about it like write to the greeting card companies to make them declare it a national something so we can all get of work and be with our best of kin and partake of the traditional yet delicious wafer and sing carols and debate the existence of the Tognoblit Tyrannosaurus who comes down chimneys and dyes eggs into heart shaped cookies and lights fireworks on the kitchen table disturbing the punch bowl but cooking the traditional wafer just the way it was traditionally prepared before they started to buy them in bulk from the guy who is making a fortune selling the unleavened bread to the Jews at Passover and the bits of soon to be Jesus's to the Catholic diocese where transubstantiation is more of a back burner doctrine than a church splitting 95 theses kind of thing. Yes that will be today. Oh what a glorious day.

Today the na na na's got in the way of the opps I wish I had different set of circumstantial evidence to live my life in. The tin can river boat is sinking in the puddle that is between me and my wildest nightmares. If only I would keep the good fight going. To arrive beyond the shadow when the peace will align itself without my pesky permissiveness. Totting flyers like they were fancy jewelry and hoisting my high-jinks to the mast top like an independent rocket ship slowly going the way of the radio. To feel the pain of lost love is to take the shot of possibility in the arm where it hurts the most. Look the moon in the face and tell him your stories because that man in there is an illusion and they always seem to understand. Midnight percentages let sleeping dogs lie like the filthy dogs that they are. Pencil in the waste and you will find room in the budget for the basket case.

There is something really scary about scary stuff happening. I mean my fiancé isn't supposed to be in a car crash. That stuff doesn’t happen to regular people (me), it only happens on TV and stuff. So yeah, I know more than ever that God is taking care of me but to see how stinkin easy it is to die. Man this is a heavy post, sorry. She's okay and I think that every thing will be fine, but this is just one more reason to hate semi's.

Father if only I could remain. To abide is all I ask. Is there a way to live for you without life getting in the way. Oh what a life that would be without life getting in the way. If only I would abide in you. My heart is surely in need of your loving presence. Your strength and your support could carry me through. Your burden is so light and your yolk so easy. Why do I demand to do things my way. What things have I even done? I have done no thing but remain alive. If only I could remain in you life would live itself.

So here we are in week 2 of my twenty first year of living and the tide turns upwards again. This is one of those indicators of how I am doing when you see me on this every day. If I don't blog then I usually am either really freaking busy and tired or sinnin it up good. Often it is all of the above. I can't believe that the summer is half over. Man I am so scared to leave again. I hate being away from Melissa more than anything in the world. I just need to be with her because I love her so much. I just want school to end now and them to hand me a degree. Man I miss performing. I wish I could find a way to entertain and be an adult. Life is so full of a lot of things I could totally do with out. You've heard it all before. I think this week will be little different.

Temporary Tattoos

I stick them one with all intentions of them rubbing off quickly. I create a innovative design and plaster the picture on my pectorals or wherever the newest place to put my pride and joy is. And then I wait. No waiting is too positive, I forget. I forget why I got the tattoo in the first place. I don't know what it stands for or if I even liked the idea at one time. I must have. I mean getting a tattoo is a commitment. Unless of course you keep giving yourself fake tattoos.

Oh God of power and of might. I might have another day in store. Daily I question my ability to follow. Following until I can't continue. Continuing until the sun sets on my life. Living for the one reason, the one person, the God of the Universe. The Universal truth of you bosom will never let me go. I will rest here until the storm passes.

"God is not a part of your story; you are a part of God's story. The world does not revolve around you; the world revolves around God and we are a part of that."

Tim Keel

How deeply convicting this was to me I do not know. I feel as if the pride that daily corrodes my relationship to my savior was shown at its height when I heard this statement of Truth. Did I really think of God as a part of my life? Am I that freaking messed up? Father you alone know my heart. Forgive me once again for wanting anything but to be a part of your story, the greatest story ever told.

Half steps are better than no steps. The well-laid plan often looks different when it falls out of your pocket. The question is staying power. One day is done. 347 to go. Do I have what it takes. No. Can I fully rely on the one who does? Maybe. Each time I stare at the full moon I can't quite close my memory to the times when it used to mean something. It only stands to reason that tomorrow can be the same. Burn the city. Erase the ties to the shallow milieu because the time is coming and has now come.

Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday dear billy. Happy birthday to me.

Happy Birthday to Melissa. Happy Birthday to Melissa. Happy Birthday dear Melissa. Happy Birthday to you.

There are two sides to sharing your date of birth with the one you love. The selfish one says "Hey, this is my day and I don't want any attention on anyone else but me." But the cute one says "Ahh I love that we were born on the same day because it is like destiny has brought to July 13 babies together". Oh yeah and side number three, the jerky practical side says "At least you'll never forget her birthday, heh heh heh[<----jerky laugh]".

Unhealthy and broken I come to face the facts I've disregarded. Father and Lord of all that there is and ever will be I submit to your will for my life. I need you so much that it is freaking ridiculous. I am going to married in less than a year and I need to live my life like I care. I am an adult whether I hate it or not. I am 21 today. Twenty freaking one. What the hell am I doing with my life. It's time to do something. Or to say it more gracefully, as a sage of sorts could be quoted as screaming over coffee "Get your butt in gear". Jesus sanctify my dilly-dallies. Burn the funk with a hot iron and spit on my complacency. Break molds and break formulas. Allow me to be a vessel once again. Man this disciple thing is a beach and a half. F@*K make money and die. F$#K guilt that leads to apathy. F@#K false pleasure. War the simple life. War sacrifice. War daily self-death. Father empower me to get my butt in f*@#$&g gear.

Today I decided to transform into a butterfly. I bought a cocoon from a raccoon that had a few lying around and I stuffed my insides inside. I like it so far. It is nice and spacious and pretty like a clean dirt bike.

Take a log for instance. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but a friend of the family. Your that special. You hog you. Take a pant-leg for instance. I would rather be a has-been than a has-bean. Unless I was a magic has-bean. I plant well for a non-farmer. I take images of indoor soccer fields to Botswana and amaze the children. All of their parents have AIDS. Take a garage sale for instance. I hate to break it to the left coast. Having a primitive notion of locomotion is a nuclear discovery to a native. Pile the coal in a corner and forget how to share with the weaker sex. Take a Crab tree for instance. Telepathic foreigners here my thoughts but don't understand my language. Cell phone towers topped with a cherry red blinking light to prevent my jet plane from becoming too friendly. Take a thought for instance. Mendacity comes to those who wait for anything but the truth. Complete a circle and point out all of its flaws. Hot wire a tow truck and drag your Volkswagen into the outpost for a checkup. Take a frat house for instance. Well to do doers take their time doing life wrong. Wry humor is haphazard when used like musket fire. Question what it means to be an enemy combatant and leave yourself with the warm and fuzziness. Take cotton for instance.

My Car Just Broke

Oops it did it again. It messed with my heart. I got lost in the game. Oh baby baby. I hate cars with a passion, but my passion is less fierce when they work good. Today there was lots of lightning Oooo Scary. My cousins are staying with me and they are adorable and rich a quite interesting combination. I am in KC but my Best Friends far away. Curse Chi-town and Lansing respectively. The roof feel in on our Bible study and the Christians just let the insurance pay for it. LHB is wetter than a firecracker in the ocean. We talked about new beginnings and I think I just might get around to that some time soon. Soon and very soon. And did I mention My car broke, yup cuz it did. :( Curses. Automotives be damned.

31 days

I would like to have a month again. A month that I could call holy. To make the right choices for an amount of time that could register on my life's scale. I feel farther from God each time I give in to apathy. How overused and misunderstood can a saying become? "Far from God". How paradoxical can a man become? I am a little boy playing hide and seek and hiding in the middle of the yard with my eyes covered. "You can't see me Na Na Na Na Boo Boo". I am beginning to believe my own lies. Not in my mind. Belief begins in the heart, and my heart is believes it is alone in the middle of the yard. I'm scared. I hate this feeling. I'm tired of hiding I want to go seek.

Strange Bedfellows in Strange environments

Misery is one of the catalysts but the real culprit is deeper. There is something in the surroundings of a man that lead him to choices. Infused in the walls of each room are the tendencies that place provides for. This weekend some bedfellows were the products of environment. Not a new and different person but a new and different situation. Each step is a new frontier where we immediately build an outpost and settle. Welcome to the Wild Wild West.

Spirit of Timidity

The door closes and rules change
Innocent to the touch
So perfect how could this be compromise
New issues with the same face
Complete disclosure would close her

The house is getting too small
It is invading every crevice
Skeletons are pushed behind books

Honesty comes later
After the white washed tomb
of an Uncircumcised Heart.
Repent for the masses and
Congratulate the complacency
Of one so far from victory.

Confessions of a Birderer

I bought a bird from my mother today. See wanted to give it to me but I did the adult thing and left her money on the kitchen counter with a little note that said "Ha Ha gotcha now you have to take my money punk". So we'll see how that goes. But the importance of the bird buying is that i have a bird now. This is a whole new world for a man who has never been anything but birdless his whole life. I put him in a cage that I used to use for holding my knife collection. I decided to put my knife collection in my kitchen cabinet next to the wine rack full of transmissions. I have been calling the bird Tweedy but haven't officially written anything on his birth certificate so his name is still up in the air. (Note: Bird pun was just attempted) I am also assuming he is a boy because all things blue have a Y chromosome if you get what sizzling on the hot coals of innuendo. I don't think he likes me. But perhaps he is just sacred to live in the old knife cage. Lord knows I would think twice before sleeping on a stick that used to hold a machete. What do you feed a bird. I don't have any seed or anything. I have a few cashews but I'm afraid they are about the size of his head. But then again people eat melons all the time and they are definitely as big as an average human head. On second thought I can see why my mom wanted to get rid of this thing. All it does is stand there and glare at you. "What's the matter Tweedy? are you clinically depressed. Do you have anger issues. Did your daddy beat you when you were an egg. Huh. Huh. Stop looking at me you stupid birdbrain or I will straight kick your cage from hear to tim buck freaking too. You hear me. You hear me. What? You think that's funny. Are laughing at me. All show you who's the big bird in my house. Die Stupid Animal. Die." Sorry I just got a little carried away. So yeah. Umm. Anyone want buffalo wings for dinner? . . . I bought them at Sam's Club . . . last week. . . .I swear. It's not dead tweedy I promise.

Unto the third and fourth generation

Pain is in the tendencies
I can spot it a mile away
What else could he be doing

The routines that used to be mine
Before I perfected my lies
No innocence in an image age

Pain is in the silence
I refuse to admit my own improprieties
Role models model death to the dying

Maturity brings new closets
Denial is an art form
I can't even look in his eyes

Pain is in the similarities
The vigilant lust is to be pleased
Or the demon will only grow stronger

He is me. And I am He
What will They Become
Please God kill the shadows today

Pain is in the criminal dispositions
Can even retrospect correct this?
Or will the next follow in lockstep

To see him lie my lies
To see him reach in my bag of tricks
To see him seek at all cost
To see him lose his innocence
To see him begin to die
To see him mirror my every sin

Is to see my own sin again

Another notch of knowledge in my proverbial belt of untruth serum. Winner's syndrome pledges the excuse-ridden man of smiles. Tell me a factoid and I will refute the possibility instantly like a star wars force field. Laser Disk copies of useless trivia plant their roots into my brainwashed mind. Escape in education and find the worthlessness of intellect. Touch the boundaries of the learned with a cynics hand and a blind hunters eye. Feed me more destruction before I destroy my will to eat. Take away the way to truth and dance in the falling sky without a parachute for moments from now the ground is coming. Please God bottom out soon or I'll be damned to the constant mediocrity of the air surrounding my fall.

I am not really getting through to myself very well. I have a whole plate full of things I want to do with my life and I just can't seem to work up an appetite. Pardon the mixed metaphor but that's what life's like sometimes, a mixed metaphor of half-truths and meaningless meanings. I wish to overcome that one day. To bad I've lost my genie in a bottle of cheap wine. I cried. Does that mean anything? We'll see. I've cried before. I remember it somewhat. And look where that has gotten me today: two pennies shy of a broken piggy bank. The days will continue to pile up like my dirty laundry and the errors will continue to pile up like the laundry that is indeed in need of air. Pardon the mixed metaphor.

So tired. So in love. So ready to begin. So glad to be home. So sunburned. So going to bed.

So I am home from school now. I still feel like I have to leave any day, but I don't. I have the whole summer. What scares me is that I feel like I am just as capable of being a lazy bum in Kansas City as I am in Chicago. I spent a year making excuses about how much it sucked to be away from my friends and family and Melissa, but I think all that was just me being lazy. I need to get on the ball and just start doing what I know I should be doing. I don't regret going away to school, I regret using it as an excuse to live a sucky life.

Dowhoop dillies smack my apple with a canned curry bracelet. Take me to the ballgame and play pumpernickel on my pajamas. I wallow in the hollow holla if you can hear me or need a pixy stick because I know a guy with a mole and hammock. To Legit to quit the armed forces until I get my free lemonade stand. Hold my hamburger while I digest my waffle. I got a bag of tricks the size of New Hampshire and a hamster that eats dumpsters for breakfast. Tell me a story about candle wicks and their lusty busty brethren and their ham hocks. I divided the spoil between a Polynesian immigrant and my pirate roommate who sacks and pillages like Rainman on Trivial Pursuit.

"When you honor the sanctity of love, the person is exalted and pleasure ensues. But when you seek pleasure for its own sake, it is the person you profane and weariness which ensues."

Ravi Zacharias

This is the finest line in all love relationships. I love Melissa more than anything in the entire world and that brings me so much pleasure. I enjoy holding her hand and kissing her and being next to her all the time. There is nothing explicitly wrong in this. However I know there is a line. There is a time in which we seek pleasure for its own sake, leaving each other as vehicles of pleasure and loving partners. The line is so fine, and being still outside the marriage covenant is so hard. Not consummating my love to Melissa is contrary to everything that I feel inside. But the truth here is that weariness ensues. I think that I wonder what makes relationships so hard sometime and I think it is this. There is nothing wrong with pleasure as a byproduct of love, but pleasure as a separate end inside of a love relationship, is detrimental. God please help me to interweave my life from outside of its compartments. Love must touch all parts of my life.

"That's why we sing for these kids, who don't have a thing except for a dream, and a f----n' rap magazine who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long, idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs. Or for anyone who's ever been through s--t in their lives, till they sit and they cry at night wishin' they'd die Till they throw on a rap record and they sit, and they vibe. We're nothin' to you but we're the f----n' s--t in they eyes. . ."

Eminem -- Sing For the Moment

Love him or hate him he is tapped directly into youth culture. Scratch that he is culture. So his message is that there is no message from me or anyone, just music. I don't know if he would say it like this but this is like a textbook argument for existential transcendence through art. So he can reach kids not just because of simplistic vulgarity or because of violence, as so many moralists would like to think, but because he speaks to the reality of something people experience. So what can an artist take from this who has a different view of reality than that of the hip hop superstar? Maybe just that kids want authenticity. They know life isn't peach and cookies and cream and cakies, its poverty, its suicidal thoughts, and its broken homes, its pain. Christ can't be real to anyone when he's identified with "not Eminem", or with empty morals and false ideals. Don't boycott. Let's worship Christ with our art by passionately seeking to be more real than anyone else out there.

Yesterday when I was taking the train back to my apartment there was an absolutely classic moment. Imagine with me a L-train car with their strange seventies decorum and hard carpet covered seats. Sitting in the seat directly caddie-corner across the doorway is a pair of black Velcro shoes. Follow now with me up the legs of a ridiculously pale and hairy white man. His shorts were plaid of the golf short variety and he wore a dingy T-Shirt with a band that I had never heard of plastered across the front of it. His balding bald head was covered slightly by a pair of enormous head phones. The kind that block all sound but your own pathetic music choice. His eyes are closed and the only sound on the train is this strange rocker half whisper-screaming to his Discman which is pumping white trash rock into his balding bald head. I specifically heard three words: rock, Hate, and Jews. Did I have myself a Nazi-punk on my hands or what? Man was he weird looking. He didn't fit any stereotype except his own creepy style that is hard to pin down. And so he sang all the way into the city. Absolutely freaking hilarious. He at one point opened a map of Chicago and continued his balding bald head banging and soft-scream rocking. Did I mention that he had a slight lisp that was quiet apparent when he screamed so softly. Was he a tourist with his map? A lonely, ugly, Nazi tourist? Boy am I going to do some impressions of this guy.

"Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara avis in terris"

Edgar Allan Poe-- From his short story Hop-Frog

I too have always wondered why I am not grouch of the first order. One day I will weigh enough to make jokes. One day. Look out belly here I come.

And so my summer begins. I still have school next week but I am going home for memorial day this weekend. In reflection on my first year away at school I feel like I have accomplished very little sometimes and other times I feel like it has been an amazing experience. I am definitely living in two places at the same time, trying to keep my loyalties completely to the woman I love and still go to school. I am so ready to have some focus again. I think that pulling yourself in two directions at the same time doesn’t accomplish anything except for quartering yourself.

3 days. That is all that is between me and all that makes me happy. I am so ready to be able to hold her again. Happy Anniversary Baby.

Like a babbling brook that can't shut up I discipline myself in the art of annoyance. I wind the cord of Orville Redenbacher popcorn on a string around my ashy elbows and drink hot toddy. Displaced in the classification behind the philosophy shelf that no one ever reads from. I bleed the same as a Jew from the merchant of Venice. I siphon the meaningless wheat from the chaff that I will make into rice crispy treats. Tsunamis creep into the crypt I have prepared for my cat. Yawn. Stretch. Morning.

I don't want to go to Tokyo no more. They took my hair net. I am not blaming the Japanese people, it was their government. I wouldn't want to start an Asian holocaust over a hair net but I think that drastic measures should be considered. I declared war on Japan instameaditly. Quicker than a jack rabbit gets hit with his own spit when he hulks a jack rabbit loogy in the wind. My declaration doesn’t mean much, I'm told because of my nation-less status. However I am in the process of talking to some very important nation's that are quite national and full of complete nation status of a first rate variety. Once my posse is formed we can expect the demolition of those inferior hair net nabbers in no time. I suggest a sacking of the city of Tokyo to commence immetainiously. Quicker than a dead goose plays hooky from physics class. Than post-sacking I say we have luau looting party and all wear our re-confiscated hair nets. I'll show those dirty Japs how to treat a lunch lady.

"Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.
Nor chaste, except you ravish me."

John Donne

Take me to your breast Oh Lord. Let me lean my weary head against you. I am nothing without you. Chastity is worthless unless I give myself to you. Ravish me Oh Lord. Set me free from my freedom with the prison of your breast. Let me be nothing but your beloved.

A Love Poem

Absolutely fascinated with her everything
My mind races to places she resides
Memories and Hopes mixed into forever
She is mine. She is mine.

Her smile illuminates my everyday
Pictures can only whisper of her beauty
I am putty in her soft hands
I am hers. I am hers.

My skin shivers at her every touch
Commitment and Passion personified in kisses
If only tomorrow would come.
We will be one. We will be one.

Happy Anniversary Beautiful

"If the sexual fantasies of the average person were exposed to view, the world would be horrified." Leo Tolstoy

I had a nightmare last night. Some people call them dreams, or fantasies, I find the most nightmarish dreams of all. My Dream is of my wedding night with my amazing fiancé. But sometimes my unconscious haunts my closed eyes with false desires. Not that I feel responsible for my actions in dreams or for their content, it's just they always seem to catch me off guard. I have seen far too much of the darkest side of human sexuality to claim no responsibility. By choice I exposed myself to the images of these nightmares. It hurts me so much to know that. I hate it. I know that I am not alone though. This timeless Tolstoy quote keeps me from feeling ostracized and alone. My accountability brothers are the same way. We share in our broken lives trying to understand why we still dream of the nightmare. I know that God loves me. I know that I have so much worth as Abba's Child. I know that he just wants me to love him and live in his love. The truth is that I am still frustrated. Maybe my focus is still too much on my own failure and not my worth as the child of God. My sin is not finished. I will sin again, in reality and in my dreams, but I know that those sins are forgiven and were paid for my loving Abba. I am now free to live.

As the clock ticks down on chosen experience. I question the choice I can not revoke. I hate the requirements of life. I want with all of my heart to reject the need for anything but God. I hate forced learning and fake education. I just want to be done with this now. To complain and complain is to feel ones own unimportance. My soul can not grow when my priorities are skewed.

I am living a dream. She is here and I am living a dream

Man 1: Hello Ho-Bag

Man 2: Hiddy Ho Ho-Bag

Man 3: Hey Hey Hey Ho-Bags

Man 4: What's a Ho-Bag?

Man 1 2 & 3: Duh!

Man 4: No seriously is it good or bad?

Man 1: What's good?

Man 2: What's bad?

Man 3: Your momma.

Man 4: What? What's my momma have to do with ho-bag

Man 1: I don't know you tell me.

Man 4: Listen Ho-bag my momma was . . .

Man 2: You don't know what it means and you said it anyway that makes you a poser a po-bag

Man 4: So a ho-bag's a hoser

Man 3: The maple leaf will reign long after the death of the stripes and stars. There will forever be a Great White North where momma jokes on playgrounds will be the salons for the young philosopher kings. The demons of ingnorence shall never peneatrate her borders. Relative to the wind and anchored to the ice she screams of fish and bear, moose and forest, hockey and Labbat Blue. Vive la Canada. Vive la Canadian slang.

The new month is upon me and I can't help but resist the turn of a new tide. I have tried to turn before. I have declared and renewed the vision so many times that I am cynical of my own wish for change. The imbroglio of my inner man has woven itself into a knot of dreams and deeds and nightmares and misdeeds. New. Each day is new. But the calendar turning from its out of control early thirties back to it's innocent 1 has a way of reminding me. I know every time I look in the mirror that change is necessary and now. I know that truth is tantamount to this pursuit. I know that discipline is the dialectic. But I know I won't.

Can I really convict myself of a crime I am certain to commit? Or should my certainty shame me from recidivism to repentance.

So I think that the worst of the human condition is visible in what means we take to pursue immediate temporal pleasure. Personal pornographic demons are seared behind the eyes of a marred saint impersonator as he casts stones. So who am I to ignore the writing in the dirt. Instantly, the feeling in every corner of my body what my spirit can only wish to ascertain through diligence. Consequences be damned. Vomit be damned. Loss of Innocence be damned. I see the blatant error of my neighbor, but my plank is lodged. The scar tissue has over grown like a vacant lot and my sight is now nothing but tainted memory mixed with carnal imagination.

Psalm 27
4 One thing I ask of the LORD ,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.

Please renew my passion for eternal pleasure God. This world is but a shadow of your beauty. Let it never be satisfying. Let it never be comfortable. I seek that which is beyond any sexy substance. Break me Lord. Break me.

So God is the ultimate pleasure. The single calling of humanity is to enjoy that pleasure. Why do I serve my flesh a silver platter of delicies when my spirit is dying of hunger? I don't know who I am any more. Pleasure I have sought. God I have not. The journey seems to have leveled off now. No mountians no valleys just joyless exsistence and sins of ommision.

To dive into a pool of shallow water is infantile unless you are shallow yourself. I have a friend who is 2 feet shallow and can dive into 3 feet of water just fine. She was raised in the Sahara and never got a proper amount of Vitamin C. Camel milk happens to be quite Vitamin C less. She tours with the circus jumping into shallow pools at her our risk. She makes pretty decent cash for a leper. She still has most of her skin. Water is apparently bad for leprosy so she has recently been diving into pools of vegetable oil. This helps her skin look young as it dies away and falls to the ground. Shallow circus folk are incredibly loyal and she always remembers my birthday. This last year she bought me a paint by number set. She never fails to send Christmas cards to me even though she's Jewish and one time she congratulated me on the birth of my child. I don't have any Children anymore but it is the thought that counts.

My Honey Bee

Buzz Buzz
Goes my Love
My little honey Bee

Right from the start
She's polonated my heart
I want kiss that beautiful Bee

She's got a ring on her finger
And one heck of a stinger
And I'm gonna marry that Bee!

I have been thinking about becoming depressed. You don't have to do anything with your life you just have to lay there and think about how bad you have it. I've got it pretty bad. Oh yeah. I've got it pretty stinkin bad. I have all my limbs but that is not to say that I don't have a bit of suffering. Seriously. Are you feeling that.

Happiness is relative to the sun. I hate the mornings when he dosen't show up. I feel like an orphan in a big city. But days when he peeks through my window and shines on my face while I am still dreaming of her, these are the days I love.

To degrade the grading system of humanity would be too trite. I hate the appearences of things. Who am I to see the truth behind the hersey? I hate when judgement is rooted in misunderstood asumptions. Communication is a buzz word among people who don't even know what they are talking about. Take a look at the thoughts I stand for and keep your eyes to yourself. Would a tie change my pride? Am I proud of the humility it takes to look stupid? Tie one on for the team and creap one day closer to the reaper.

I love a little girl named Melissa Gendreau. Love is an interesting thing. I totally don't understand it, but I know that I love her. I think love is commitment to one person. Love is an action. I am over philsophizing it. I just love her. Yup I'm gonna marry that beautiful girl.

Death and the Maiden

I bought a toothbrush from a villainous toothbrush salesman on the corner today. I walked up to him slow and steady, like glue running through the fingers of a monkey who does sign language. I looked into his eyes and saw my reflection. I looked good. So good I asked myself out on a date while looking into the toothbrush salesman's eye. This caused a moment of slight awkwardness like when you accidentally spit on a friends lip while speaking and then try to clean it off with your shirt. I politely turned myself down informing the man in the reflection that I was neither gay nor unattached but if I was either, neither, or both I would definitely look him up in the yellow pages. By this time the toothbrush salesman smelled the fishiness of the situation. I had been eating fish. Salmon. And hush puppies (bread balls often eaten with fish but not themselves fishy). He asked me point blank. "Do you or do you not want a . . . " Lost in the subtly of stupidity and the silence of unfinished point blank sentences I says to the salesman. "Why of course. It's for my wife." He didn't believe me for a minute. He saw right through me like an invisible wall that you can see right through without even seeing it. I had to cover my lie with a better lie. "I need it to kill a . . . " I thought that the man was in the business of unfinished sentences and would appreciate the irony of my own subtly. I tried to make a knowing face like I knew that he knew what I was talking about. But instead he said. "What are you talking about man?" I hit him in the face with my briefcase like he was an ex boyfriend, and took the pile of toothbrushes and ran away, throwing a handful of change at his bleeding body. I went home. No more fish breath and a happy wife with a variety of toothbrush choices.

Is this not the pinnacle of human pride. I am writing my thoughts with the arrogance that someone cares. I don't even care about most of my own thoughts, why should I expect you to care? Or does anyone care? What would it mean if you cared about my thoughts? Would you want to know me, or just about me? Has it become the same thing? I would like to say that I care about people and the world, but the cynicism of my young American mind questions the hypocrisy implicit in that statement. Do I care about people really or do I just want the world to believe that I care so as to make myself appear caring? Man I ask a lot of rhetorical questions. I think that is because I care whether or not you, the person who cares nothing about me, thinks I am intelligent. I'm a dork.